1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to a photo detecting device and an image pickup device, and more particularly a photo detecting device including an image pickup apparatus having a lens array.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional digital still camera generates a color image signal by focusing light from a subject onto an image pickup device which may be a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) image sensor or a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor. The image pickup device generates an electrical signal representing the subject from the focused light striking the image pickup device. Recently, an image pickup apparatus with a lens array composed of a group of micro lenses arranged on a single plane between a main lens and an image sensor has been disclosed. Such an image pickup apparatus is called a Plenoptic-type image pickup apparatus.
Since a Plenoptic-type image pickup device can reconstruct an image obtained by an optical system having a lens array, the Plenoptic-type image pickup apparatus can be used to determine the Depth of Field (DOP), measure a distance using parallax, take a 3-dimensional (3D) image, and improve resolution of an image.
Since digital still cameras having a Plenoptic-type image pickup device can separately gather information for every micro lenses, they may be able to control the DOF, improve image resolution, and measure a distance using parallax. However, coloring of image data is difficult for these digital still cameras with lens arrays.
When a color image is generated from a one-chip 2D image pickup device, a general image pickup apparatus generates full color data by determining colors for every pixels by interpolation after gathering color information by applying different spectrum characteristics to every position according to a Bayer arrangement. A Bayer arrangement is an arrangement of color filters over the light sensitive pixels of the image pickup device so that the image pickup device can generate a signal indicating the colors of the subject.
When a Bayer pattern is used with Plenoptic-type image pickup devices a lot of the light information may be lost due to the filters for gathering color information. This loss may make it difficult or impossible to calculate such information as DOF.